News & Announcements

A bill passed by the Michigan State Senate would endanger the health of Michiganders by granting sweeping new powers to practitioners of unscientific bogus medicine and treatments, said the Center for Inquiry.

Volume 42

November 1, 1996

New Hopkins Book Claims UFO Abducted Top Official Of The United Nations And Two Bodyguards In 1989, Along With Linda “Cortile”

Budd Hopkins, whose earlier reports on the Linda “Cortile” case claimed that United Nations Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar and two bodyguards had witnessed Linda being “beamed up” to a hovering UFO from her Manhattan apartment on Nov. 30, 1989, now claims that the UFO then swooped down and also abducted Perez de Cuellar and his two bodyguards. This new claim appears in Hopkins’ new book: “WITNESSED: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions.” [Note the plural.] Hopkins does not identify Perez de Cuellar by name but refers to him as “a political figure of international significance.” Another new revelation is that one of the bodyguards—Richard—allegedly has been abducted many times since childhood to rendezvous with Linda aboard a UFO. Hopkins even speculates that Richard might be the father of Linda’s younger son—the result of their “bonding” on board a UFO in 1981. Hopkins calls this case the most impressive UFO-abduction incident of the century.

Hopkins’ first public report on the case was made on July 11, 1992, at the MUFON conference in Albuquerque, N.M. [SUN #17/Sept. 1992]. He reported that Linda had written him in April 1989, saying she suspected that a small bump on her nose might contain an “alien implant,” which prompted Hopkins to invite her to attend meetings of his “abductee support group.” On Nov. 30, 1989, Linda called Hopkins to report being beamed up to a hovering UFO from her 12th floor apartment in lower Manhattan. This prompted Hopkins to invite Linda over to his studio for a hypnotic regression session on Dec. 2.

Unlike traditional ETs, who (allegedly) communicate with abductees via telepathy, Linda reported that hers spoke in a strange language, which Linda recalled under hypnosis: “NOBBYEGG, HOBBYEGG. NO KAVE KAVE KOBBYEGG NO KAVE.” Linda said she responded: “KAVE-me or KAVE-y.” Later, under hypnosis, Linda said that one of the ETs “asks about my family....He wanted to know how everybody was and I said they were fine.” In Hopkins’ book he acknowledges that this was his first case in which an abductee claimed to have spoken in an “alien tongue,” but he did not mention this curious aspect in his 1992 Albuquerque account. He told the MUFON audience that he found Linda’s story interesting but “thought nothing more about it (because) it was just so similar to so many other cases.”

Then in early February 1991, Linda became Hopkins’ star abductee when he received a typewritten letter from “Richard” and “Dan,” who identified themselves as “police officers” and claimed they had witnessed Linda being beamed up to the UFO from their “patrol car” parked near Linda’s apartment building at around 3:15 a.m. on Nov. 30, 1989. After Linda entered the UFO, according to the letter, the UFO “then plunged into the river behind us, not far from Pier 17, behind the Brooklyn Bridge.” The letter concluded: “My partner and

I have been debating for 14 or 15 months if we should seek her out. We know the building and we know which window she came out of. Perhaps she was just a figment of our imagination. If she isn’t, is she alive and well? We have to know.” [Emphasis added.]

Hopkins informed Linda of the letter and told her she might be visited by “Richard” and “Dan,” and—according to Linda—the two men did visit her on the night of Feb. 19, 1991. In Hopkins’ new book (p. 31), he reports that subsequent events indicated that the men had “been carrying out surveillance of her movements prior to their initial meeting.” This challenges the claim in the first Richard/Dan letter that they didn’t know if Linda was “alive and well.” Inasmuch as Richard/Dan seemingly found Linda’s apartment without any help from Hopkins, they could have knocked on her door many months earlier to find out if she was “alive and well.” But this did not prompt any Hopkins suspicions that Linda might have authored the letter.

When Hopkins informed Linda of a possible visit by Richard and Dan [R/D], he told her to ask the men to contact him directly in person or by phone, assuring them that he would protect their identities, or at the very least to send him a tape recording of their recollections of Linda’s abduction incident. During R/D’s (alleged) visit, she gave them Hopkins’ telephone number and suggested they call him from her apartment, but they refused to do so. Several weeks later, Hopkins received in the mail a tape in which Richard—clearly reading from a prepared statement—told how he and his partner had seen Linda beamed up to a hovering UFO, after which the UFO had plunged into the nearby East River. Richard added: “We waited and looked over the river for about 45 minutes. It never came up again. It stayed under there.” The tape concluded with Richard’s admonition: "Please respect the importance of our credibility at work. We just can’t be identified.” In early April, Hopkins received a brief typewritten letter from Dan, which now identified R/D as “two detectives” rather than "police officers.”

Hopkins Unable To Find Any Detectives To Match Linda’s Description, So Dan/Richard Now Claim They Are Bodyguards For V.I.P.

When more than a month had passed without Richard or Dan calling or visiting Hopkins, he launched an effort to locate them in the belief “that they would be very easy to locate because we not only had excellent descriptions of both [i.e., from Linda] but also knew their real first names.” But visits to several New York Police Dept. precincts failed to turn up any detectives named Richard or Dan who matched Linda’s descriptions.

A ready explanation was provided in a letter, dated April 10, 1991, which stated that R/D were not police officers or detectives, as earlier claimed, but were bodyguards accompanying a “third party” whom they were driving to a downtown heliport. The letter claimed that R/D were “given permission to reveal more facts from a third party also involved in the November 1989 incident. This third party is a very important person...and often speaks to many corners of the globe.” (Hopkins’ book quotes the entire letter except for portions deleted “to protect the anonymity of the third man.”) The letter ended: “Richard, Danny and Him.” In Hopkins’ book he comments: “It would take weeks of investigation, a major new incident on

April 29, and many more letters and other pieces of evidence before I came to fully believe in the existence of the third man.”

On April 29, 1991, Linda called Hopkins to report that she had been abducted off the streets of Manhattan around 7:30 a.m. by Richard and Dan! (Linda subsequently provided Hopkins with a more detailed account of the incident which occupied 44 double-spaced typewritten pages.) During the several hours that Linda claimed she was held hostage in D/R’s car as they drove north of Manhattan, she reported that Richard asked her: “Linda, who are you working for? You know, which government agency....If you’re working for a government agency, tell me now and we'll let you go.” When Linda denied any government affiliation, Richard then asked if the UFO-abduction incident had been a hoax—had Linda staged some kind of illusion— which she denied. Still later, according to Linda, Dan asked: “You're one of them, aren’t you?” When Linda denied being an ET, she said that Dan responded: “Don't hand me that shit! You are one of them.” Linda said that Dan told Richard to take off her shoes and socks because he believed that ETs have no toes. When Dan saw her toes he concluded she was not an ET.

Of the many questions posed during the more than three hours that Linda claims she was held hostage, Hopkins believes the most important query came from Dan: “Linda, do you think they [ETs] saw us?” Linda replied that she didn’t know because when she was being beamed up to the UFO she had not looked down.

Yet less than five months later, Hopkins would receive a letter from Dan, dated Sept. 17, 1991, which revealed that not only had the ETs seen him, Richard and the “Third Man,” but the ETs had abducted all three men shortly after Linda was beamed up on Nov. 30, 1989.

The Search For Richard And Dan Continues

Hopkins’ efforts to locate R/D now focused on the United Nations and one of his abductees had extensive video tapes of UN events, which Linda viewed to try to spot Richard or Dan. In a tape of a TV program showing USSR Premier Gorbachev’s visit to the UN, Linda reported seeing Dan standing nearby as if he were a bodyguard. When Linda said she was 150% sure the man was Dan, Hopkins had a series of still photo enlargements made which could be used to locate Dan. But when Hopkins showed these photos to Richard Ward, chief of the United Nations Security and Safety Service which provides bodyguards for UN officials, Ward said “the man in the pictures did not work at the UN and that he had no idea who he was. He claimed he had never seen him before.” Because Hopkins says he “couldn’t be sure if he [Ward] was telling the truth,” Hopkins and Linda visited the UN, showing “Dan’s photos” to numerous security guards and employees to see if anyone recognized him—but without success.

Hopkins’ efforts to locate Dan at the State Department’s diplomatic security section and the Soviet mission in New York were similarly unsuccessful. “That left the Secret Service, the CIA, the FBI or the NSA [National Security Agency]” as possible alternatives, according to Hopkins. Next Hopkins decided to hire a professional detective agency to try to track down R/D, with funds provided by one of Hopkins’ wealthy supporters. Shortly, a detective agency investigator called with good news: he had positively identified Dan as being a Secret Service agent who had recently retired. When arrangements were made for Hopkins to meet this retired Secret Service agent, he “bore only the most superficial resemblance to Dan’s photograph."

When Hopkins showed “Dan’s photo” to the man and to another Secret Service official in the New York office, neither of them recognized “Dan.” This prompted Hopkins to write: “I was forced to abandon the idea that Dan and Richard were Secret Service agents....It now seemed virtually certain that Dan and Richard worked at one of our country’s secret intelligence agencies and so would be nearly impossible to locate."

Hopkins Receives “The Most Important Document Of All"

On Sept. 17, 1991, Dan wrote a letter to Hopkins which he characterizes as the “single most important of all those I've received from many witnesses and security personnel involved in this case.” Early in Dan’s letter he reported: “After the object [UFO] splashed into the river with Linda in it, the third party wanted to swim out to find her. We stopped him and walked with him to the car. Instantaneously, we found ourselves sitting on a seashore somewhere.... We didn’t know how we arrived there....We looked straight ahead of us, and there we saw the girl we had seen in the light of the UFO earlier on. She was bending down by the sea alongside of those creatures. They were digging in the sand, using what looked like scooped shovels. They put their findings in square or rectangular metallic boxes or pails....The three beings didn’t appear to speak. But we could hear a voice coming from the girl’s direction.... She spoke in a peculiar foreign tongue....

"At one point...all of them walked up to us as we sat there. The girl (Linda) held up what appeared to us to be a lifeless fish and said to us in a bold voice—‘LOOK AND SEE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE'....I asked her who she was. She didn’t answer. One of the beings replied, ‘Lady of the Sands'....Soon after they turned on their heels (no toes, except for Linda’s) and they walked away toward the sea... Next Richard and I were back by our car trying to pull the third party off the roof of it...” [Emphasis added.]

In Hopkins’ book (p. 99), he writes: “If his [Dan’s] account can be trusted (and so far there was no evidence to suggest it couldn’t), it points to a startling possibility. On the morning of November 30, 1989, Linda Cortile was apparently a temporary and involuntary participant in an attempt to convey to a major political leader a benign alien concern with earth’s ecology.... Through their use of Linda as the ecologically concerned ‘Lady of the Sands,’ these witnesses were left with the impression that the UFO occupants’ purpose on earth is selfless and caring, focused, it would seem, on the health and well-being of our planet.”

This posed a quandry for Hopkins because he has strongly challenged the views of other abductologists, such as Harvard’s Dr. John Mack, that ET abductions are intended to make abductees more aware of earth’s ecological problems. But in the closing pages of Hopkins’ book he suggests that Linda’s reported actions on the beach might have been “merely a performance to mislead an important political leader.”

Because of the significant revelations in Dan’s letter, which Linda had never recalled in her earlier regressive hypnosis sessions, Hopkins invited her for another session. He reports that “Linda was quite willing to try hypnosis again” and the session took place on Sept. 21, 1991. Hopkins did inform Linda about having received Dan’s recent letter but he intentionally did not tell her anything about Dan’s report of what (allegedly) occurred on the beach.

Surprise, Surprise! Linda Now Remembers The Beach Incident

Under hypnosis, Linda recalled being taken aboard the UFO and given the “traditional” examination atop a table. Then she recalled being led out of a door and reports “it’s cold and windy....I’m at a beach....Now they're giving me a scoop... [and] a pail....So as soon as we get those soil samples, they're going to test them and they're going to tell everyone why our sea creatures are dying. Then we're going to have to stop what we're doing.” Hopkins tells Linda to look around to see if there are any other people. Linda reports seeing “three people sitting on the sand.... They're all male....Then I pick up a bluefish and it’s their fault, people like them that kill our sea creatures....And I said ‘Look what you've done.'” When Hopkins asks Linda to describe the three men, she responds: “They're all wearing suits. Nice suits....I see Richard, see Dan.” [Emphasis added.] Shortly, Hopkins decided to end the hypnosis session. One of the “many dazzling surprises,” according to Hopkins, “was the extraordinary and highly detailed consonance between Dan’s letter and Linda’s recollections of her seaside experience.” [Emphasis added.]

Hopkins expresses his admiration for the (seemingly) remarkable ability of ETs “to erase [from abductees’ memories] any time period they choose and ‘spontaneously’ to reinstate memories on command. In this case, recollection of the beach scene was blocked for Linda and the three men for many months even though she had undergone hypnosis on the events of that night. Then, somehow Dan, Richard, and the third man are allowed to ‘spontaneously’ recall the Lady of the Sands. A letter is sent to me about their recollections, I bring Linda in for another hypnosis session, and she, too, recalls the scene. There is an unsettling—and unearthly—precision in all this.” [Emphasis added.] (Hopkins does not consider a more earthly possibility: that the Dan and Richard letters were authored by Linda herself.) On Oct. 8, Linda returned to Hopkins’ apartment to hear him read all of Dan’s letter, while a video camera recorded her reactions. According to Hopkins,Linda’s reactions were “devastating because of their subtlety.” [Emphasis added.]

Linda Reports Being Abducted By Dan And Taken To Long Island Beach

A week later, on Oct. 15, 1991, Linda called Hopkins to report that she had been abducted by Dan and taken to a Long Island beach house. In the house, Linda reported seeing two framed pictures of herself—one of her kissing younger son Johnny, and another of her taken in lower Manhattan. Linda said Dan gave her a white nightgown, like the one she had been wearing on the night of the UFO abduction, which she finally agreed to put on over her street clothes. To resist his amorous advances, Linda said she ran out onto the beach, with Dan chasing after her. When he caught up with her, Linda said, Dan pushed her face into the water and held it as if he wanted to drown her. Fortuitously, Richard suddenly appeared, rescued Linda and drove her back to Manhattan. That night when Linda visited Hopkins, she brought along a bag containing a wet, sandy nightgown and Hopkins said he saw traces of sand in her hair and eyebrows. He was impressed by this physical evidence which validated Linda’s tale.

Further proof would arrive a few days later when Hopkins received a four-page letter from Richard, dated Oct. 21, which included five color photos which Dan (allegedly) took of Linda while he was chasing her on the beach. According to Hopkins, “Linda was wearing the white nightgown and negligee over her jeans and blouse. The photos showed her running toward the water...” But in the two of these photos reproduced in Hopkins’ book, no jeans are visible and in one picture Linda appears to be walking casually, not running.

In Richard’s Oct. 21 letter, he revealed there were two other cars with important political figures and security guards which had been stalled alongside his and Dan’s on the night of Linda’s UFO abduction. (The following spring, in Richard’s letter of May 23, 1992, he said the three cars contained “two US Government officials, two foreign statesmen and one World Leader.”) These other officials had seen Linda’s abduction, according to Richard, but he did not say whether they also saw the abduction of Richard, Dan and the Third Man. When R/D and the Third Man returned to their car, the two other cars had departed—seemingly unconcerned about the mysterious disappearance of the Third Man. Richard warned Hopkins to halt his efforts to make direct contact lest it “cause an international incident.” Richard, rejecting Hopkins’ suggestion that he rent a post office box for direct communications, told Hopkins that “If, by any chance, you have a message for me, please give it to Linda.” NEW WITNESS: AN ELDERLY WOMAN ON THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE

In late November 1991, Hopkins received a letter from a 60-year-old woman, whom Hopkins refers to as “Janet Kimball"—a pseudonym—who claimed her car had stalled while crossing the Brooklyn Bridge around 3:16 p.m. on Nov. 30, 1989, and that she had witnessed Linda and three ETs being beamed up to a hovering UFO. She claimed other cars on the bridge also suddenly halted—seemingly due to a mysterious force emanated by the UFO which had also stalled Richard and Dan’s car. “Janet” enclosed sketches made with crayons, similar to those provided by R/D. On Dec. 9, 1991, Hopkins drove to a town in upstate New York to interview Janet and was surprised when Linda declined to accompany him. Linda’s explanation was: “Richard and Dan have caused me so much trouble and fear that I don’t want to run the risk of somebody else knowing who I am.” [Yet a few months later she would speak at the MUFON conference in Albuquerque and has made numerous public appearances since then.]

Hopkins finds a remarkable similarity between Janet’s account and those of Richard and Dan, but ignores a significant discrepancy. Janet’s account states that after Linda was taken aboard the UFO it "quickly rose up above the building and flew away at a very fast speed....It passed over a highway or drive below and then proceeded to climb higher, over the center of the bridge....when this UFO passed over the bridge...” [Emphasis added.] But according to the first Richard/Dan letter of early February, 1991 (before R/D “remembered” their own abduction), they claimed that after Linda was taken aboard the UFO “it then plunged [down] into the river behind us, not far from Pier 17, behind the Brooklyn Bridge.” IF Dan, Richard and the Third Man were abducted immediately after taking Linda, Janet should have seen the UFO zoom down toward their car—or seen them being “beamed up” into the UFO.

Richard “Discovers” Linda Is His Frequent UFO-abduction Companion

According to Linda, Richard was showing an emotional attachment which prompted him to frequently follow and chat with her. In Richard’s Nov. 22, 1991, letter, he recalled “dreams” of periodic rendezvous from childhood with a beautiful little girl whom he called Baby Ann and who called him Mickey. Richard wrote that on Nov. 30, 1989, as he viewed Linda being beamed up to the UFO, “there I saw MY BABY ANN hanging in the light like a Christmas Tree Bell....I found her alright. Linda IS my Baby Ann. She’s real and not a figment of my imagination."

Naturally, Hopkins wanted to check this remarkable new development with Linda, via regressive hypnosis. Hopkins reports that on Nov. 25, she arrive at his studio “in a happy frame of mind, completely unaware that Richard had already reported his view of their complex, decades-long relationship.” [Emphasis added.] Under hypnosis Linda recalled that during her childhood she had an “imaginary friend,” whom she called Mickey. Before Hopkins read Richard’s recent letter to Linda, he set up a video camera to record her reactions. When she heard Richard’s references to “Baby Ann” and “Mickey,” Linda appeared stunned and said: “Oh, Budd, that’s weird! That’s weird!....Is he saying that my imaginary friend wasn’t imaginary?” Hopkins responds: “Mickey was Richard. And you were Baby Ann.” Linda lowered her eyes and whispered: “God.” [SUN Comment: Having seen and heard Linda speak at several MUFON conferences, we found her to be a very dramatic speaker. One MUFON attendee commented to SUN: “She should go to Hollywood."]Later, Hopkins reports that “Linda and Richard separately recalled the circumstances in which their ‘bonding’ took place under alien control and direction. They each described a unique ‘bonding arena’ in which they were placed, and, in which they believe they had sexual intercourse. Linda, as might be expected, remembers the experience with anger and shame and a sense of helplessness, while Richard thinks of it as the moment in which Johnny [Linda’s younger son] was conceived."

If Hopkins has ever asked Linda’s husband for his reactions to this (seeming) “UFOlogical infidelity” he does not report her husband’s response. But in the closing pages of the book, Hopkins does note that “on a domestic level, all of these experiences have increased the strains on her marriage...”

A Letter From The “Third Man"?

In late 1991, Hopkins received a typewritten letter dated 23 December 1991, from “The Third and Last Man,” on paper with an image of the United Nations building, which Hopkins admits can be purchased in the UN gift shop. But there was no written signature. The letter referred both to Linda’s abduction and the beach incidents and commented: “What I have seen, heard and felt on the seashore that November morning in 1989, hastened a dream that has been in a talking stage for the past four decades or so. This dream has been ‘World Peace.’ I can only say, it was time to make it happen.” If Perez de Cuellar not only had seen but also experienced physical proof that ETs from other worlds were visiting earth, he could achieve immortality by breaking the news to world leaders at a special session of the UN. He could ask them to unite to halt the traumatic kidnapping of their citizens. However, the letter closed with the statement: “My position stands firm. I cannot and shall not give a hint concerning my involvement.”

Hopkins Meets Perez De Cueller In Chicago

On Nov. 12, 1993, Hopkins had the opportunity to meet with Perez de Cuellar at Chicago’s O'Hare Airport, during his short layover enroute from Europe to South America. The interview was arranged by a Chicago reporter friend of Hopkins. When the reporter introduced Hopkins to de Cueller, his “passive, phlegmatic expression registered no change,” according to Hopkins. After discussing foreign affairs, the reporter asked Perez de Cuellar if he had thought about the UFO phenomenon, and he responded by discussing current foreign affairs issues. Finally, the reporter showed Perez de Cueller a magazine article about the Linda incident and pointed to a paragraph which described his own involvement. Hopkins reports that Perez de Cueller “muttered something to the effect that he didn’t ‘remember anything like that.'” Later, when pressed by the reporter, Perez de Cueller said that maybe one of his bodyguards “might have seen something...a light...years ago..."

When Hopkins met Perez de Cuellar, he handed him a packet of material dealing with the Linda case. Hopkins is impressed that Perez de Cuellar has never written to Hopkins to deny his involvement in the Linda incident. Hopkins concludes that “until he decides to go public with what he remembers from the night of November 30, 1989, he cannot have much inner peace."

The Perfectly Orchestrated Operation That Went Awry

In Hopkins’ view, it was no accident that Linda was abducted before the eyes of the Secretary General of the UN, and that he and two bodyguards were then abducted. It was all part of a grandiose ET plan to demonstrate what Hopkins calls “the UFO’s awesome technological power.” Hopkins does not indicate whether he believes the ETs selected Linda because they knew that one of Perez de Cuellar’s bodyguards was her long-time UFO-abduction companion, or whether she earlier had been selected and the ETs arranged for Richard to accompany Perez de Cuellar. In either event, timing was crucial. Because none of the alleged witnesses reporting seeing the UFO arrive at Linda’s apartment house, Hopkins concludes that it did not turn on its bright lights until it was time for Linda’s abduction, by which time the ETs had entered Linda’s bedroom and the Perez de Cuellar motorcade was nearing her apartment building. Then the UFO emitted its mysterious radiation which killed the engines of all three cars in the Perez de Cuellar motorcade—but not those of other cars on FDR Drive. And the UFO stalled the car of “Janet Kimball” as well as other cars on the Brooklyn Bridge. But so far as is known, the UFO’s emission did not result in a stalling of dozens of other cars in the area.

IF Hopkins is correct, the omniscient ETs overlooked one vitally important element: They badly misjudged Perez de Cuellar. They assumed that he would be eager to finish his tenure at the United Nations with a historic, world-shaking revelation which would assure him of immortal fame. IF Hopkins is correct that the objective of the Linda incident was to make known to the public and the world’s leaders that earth has alien visitors with awesome technical prowess, the ETs have shown great patience in waiting SEVEN YEARS for Perez de Cuellar to speak out. Surely ETs will not wait forever and will soon repeat their demonstration.

Presumably the ETs will have learned from the Linda incident. Instead of demonstrating their "beam-me-up-Scotty” abduction technique at 3 a.m. when most people are asleep, they will conduct their next demonstration in broad daylight before many thousands of people—such as at the next Superbowl game. Or they might abduct the President from the lawn of the White House during some major ceremony when many American and foreign TV network camera crews are present. Surely ETs are too wise to repeat their earlier mistake.

If such a demonstration does not occur in the near future, it will increase suspicions that what Hopkins has called the most impressive UFO case of all time is really a hoax. If Linda herself is not involved, then the objective was to demonstrate the extreme credulity of the leader of the “UFO-abduction cult,” as well as Harvard’s Dr. John Mack who earlier endorsed the Linda case. If so, possibly the hoax was perpetrated by the U.S. Government, the U.N., the KGB, or SUN. Even the Red Cross and Boy Scouts are not entirely beyond suspicion.

New Santilli Controversial Autopsy Movie (SCAM) Offered For TV

Robert Kiviat, the Hollywood television producer who sold the Santilli Controversial Alien-autopsy Movie (SCAM) broadcast rights to the Fox TV network last year, is now trying to sell a sequel which purports to show an 11-minute interview with the 80+ year-old man who (allegedly) shot the autopsy film 49 years ago [SUN #41/Sept. 1996]. In addition to Kiviat, Santilli has shown the alleged autopsy cameraman (AAC) interview to a few friends and supporters, including Philip Mantle, Michael Hesemann, and Bob Shell, who have shared their impressions of the new AAC interview video with friends.

The AAC’s face and voice are not electronically disguised, but he is wearing a baseball cap pulled down over his forehead. The AAC’s voice and face seemed younger than his reported age of 80+ years, according to one SUN source. The questions submitted in advance by Kiviat were “not particularly challenging,” according to another source. AAC refused to answer a few questions and his response to some others deviated slightly from his original account, released last year by Santilli. The interview allegedly was videotaped by AAC’s son.

SUN Comment: It now has been more than a year since SCAM went public and numerous investigators—including Mantle and Shell—sought an opportunity to interview AAC with a promise to protect his identity [SUN #38/March 1996]. Santilli’s explanation for AAC’s reluctance was that he feared punishment for having violated his military security oath. This explanation was ridiculous. If SCAM were authentic, the government could quickly have identified AAC and he could have become the seeming victim of a break-in robber. Instead, AAC agreed to a videotaped interview in which his face and voice are not electronically disguised—which provides Santilli and Kiviat the opportunity for additional financial gain.

Short Shrift

Can ETs help halt rising Medicare costs? A feature article, headlined “UFO Healings” in the October issue of the MUFON UFO Journal, authored by Preston Dennett, appears to offer a solution to rising Medicare costs if ETs can be induced to abduct persons with medical problems. Dennett reports that more than a hundred abductees claim they were cured of diseases ranging from cancer to polio, and even warts. According to Dennett, 49% of the cures occurred aboard a UFO, 22% in the abductees’ home, 20% outdoors and 9% inside hospitals.

Florida woman claims mini-UFO cured her cancer: Lynne Plaskett, one of six abductees who appeared with Budd Hopkins on the Maury Povich TV show on Sept. 11, reported she had been cured of deadly T-cell lymphoma in 1975 by a an 8-inch-diameter mini-UFO that flew into her bedroom through an open window and hovered over her briefly. However, another Povich guest, Ros Reynolds, reported that her abduction experience had made her sterile. [SUN wonders if ETs carry malpractice insurance.]

“Roswell crash-fragment” created by New Mexico artist: The small thin metal fragment, given to the Roswell International Museum by a person who claimed he had been told it was recovered from a UFO crash in 1947, which achieved widespread media coverage last spring, has now been identified as the work of a New Mexico artist named Randy Fullbright [SUN #39/May 1996]. The artist was identified in a feature article in the Sept. 6 edition of the Albuquerque Journal, by reporter John Fleck. According to Fullbright, he supplied the fragment to the owner of an art gallery, who in turn gave it to Blake Larsen who was moving to Roswell and gave it to the UFO museum. According to Larsen, the unnamed gallery owner told him the fragment was “found near Roswell in 1947.” Artist Fullbright told reporter Fleck that he had called the Roswell UFO museum earlier to correctly identify the “Roswell crash-fragment,” but does not recall whom he talked to. The museum, which has been selling photos of the fragment, has taken in more than $1,500 from their sale, according to Max Littell, a co-founder of the museum, who said he was unaware of Fullbright’s (alleged) earlier call.

Paintings by Linda “Cortile” and son Johnny which illustrate their UFO abductions are now on sale in a New York gallery. Linda’s painting is priced at $800 and Johnny’s at $300. If interested, contact Phil Smith, Wares For Art Gallery, 281 Sixth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10014.

Hopkins new book is characterized as “drivel” by Baltimore Sun reviewer: The reviewer Michael Pakenham, begins his Aug. 11 commentary on the new Hopkins book “WITNESSED” by saying that “since I was about 15, I have read with delight, curiosity, excitement and good wishes books about unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrial beings’ designs upon this world. I am on the side of believing....Thus it is with sadness that I must report that, read soberly, this book makes an overpowering—albeit entirely unintentional—case that the whole UFO business is a ridiculous fiction, a pathetic, writhing conflation of fraud and dementia...”

NOTE: Opinions expressed in SUN are those of its Editor—unless otherwise noted—and do not necessarily represent the views of any organizations with which he is affiliated—or his spouse. We thank Dr. Gary Posner for help in proofreading.

Philip J. Klass

Phil Klass was a UFO researcher with a background in electrical engineering. He was author of seven books on UFOs, including UFOs Explained and UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game. He was also editor of the SUN newsletter, a UFO-related publication.

Content copyright CSI or the respective copyright holders. Do not redistribute without obtaining permission. Articles, reports, reviews, and letters published on the CSICOP.org website represent the views and work of individual authors. Their publication does not necessarily constitute and endorsement by CSI or its members unless so stated. Thanks to the ESO for the image of the Helix Nebula, also NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team for the image of NGC 3808B (ARP 87).